Page:Duty and Inclination 1.pdf/12

4 his mind at a time when courage and firmness were requisite to enable him to adopt a plan such as might rescue his family, not only from present but from future difficulties. After deliberating awhile, he found that the exhausted state of his finances was by no means adequate to his present expenditure; necessity therefore, from which there can be no appeal, determined him to quit his little paradise, that enchanting spot where the highest cultivation intermingled its fanciful decorations with the wild simplicity of unadorned nature.

No longer affluent, it was become necessary to subdue those feelings of regret, naturally excited by the display of taste and beauty everywhere visible, and which indeed might well cause him to waver in the decision to which his fallen fortunes had given rise.

"It is inevitable! The Villa must be parted with!" De Brooke at last ejaculated. "It must fall into the possession of others!" And where was he to go? where should he seek a residence? The wide world was open to him: he had a family,-his provision for them, alas, how scanty! As for himself, he could bear every deprivation; but his wife, his children, those dear and precious partners of every sad vicissitude, of every painful